UP chief minister and BSP president Mayawati on Sunday made a renewed effort to win over the Brahmin community and repeat the success of 2007 when she assured the community that they would continue to get their due respect and recognition in the BSP.
Ms Mayawati, who was addressing a massive Brahmin Bhaichara Sammelan in Lucknow on Sunday, said that Opposition parties were trying to mislead upper castes by spreading the canard that the BSP was casteist and anti-upper caste.
“But the BSP has always remained firm on the ‘Sarvjan Hitaye’ concept and every caste has been treated with equal respect. Brahmins have been given importance in the government as well as the party organisation. However, you (Brahmins and upper castes) must guard against the misinformation campaign of the Opposition parties on such issues,” she said.
Ms Mayawati pointed out that the Congress and BJP, in particular, were trying to instigate the upper castes against the BSP for their vested political gains. She alleged that these parties wanted the caste system to continue o that they could play the politics of caste by playing up one caste against another and polarise votes in their favour.
“The BSP is a party for ‘sarv-samaj’ and we intend to make a society that looks upon all castes as equals. This is the ‘samta-mulak samaj’ that was envisaged by Dr Ambedkar and the late Kanshi Ram,” she stated.
She recalled that the dalit-brahmin social engineering concept initiated by the BSP had borne fruit in the 2007 elections and this changed the perception of upper castes towards BSP which, obviously, was not palatable to rival parties.
She warned that with assembly elections fast approaching her political rivals would again try different tricks to provoke a casteist war in the state. She said that if Brahmins and other upper castes continued to support the BSP, she would ensure that they did not receive step-motherly treatment at any level.
Ms Mayawati listed the work that her government had done for the benefit of upper castes, particularly the economically weak sections among them.
She further lamented that even though power in the country had remained in the hands of upper castes, only a small section of the communities had benefited and a vast majority continued to remain caught in the web of poverty and unemployment. The sammelan attracted over a lakh BSP workers and according to a senior BSP leader, more than 50 per cent belonged to the Brahmin community.